Connecting people is at the core of what BT Group does. The company delivers broadband, mobile, TV, cybersecurity and networking services to more than 30 million customers in the UK and internationally, helping individuals and organisations communicate and collaborate.
Internally, BT Group is applying the same philosophy to its own workplace transformation. Through its Better Workplace Programme, the organisation is modernising offices and meeting spaces, using Huddly’s technology to create a seamless experience across its global meeting rooms.
Danny Ward, audiovisual architect at BT Group, is responsible for managing meeting room technology across the company’s global estate. Since 2020, he and his team have helped reshape the organisation’s workplace footprint as part of the initiative.
“Supporting hybrid work is our top priority,” he says. “Whether people are working from home, a cafe or one of our offices, the ability to join a meeting easily no matter where they are is essential in today’s way of working.”
The Better Workplace Programme has dramatically reshaped BT Group’s physical estate to support this vision. The company has reduced its property portfolio from hundreds of buildings to a smaller network of modern hubs and contact centres.
“BT Group has limited its building portfolio to 17 main sites from Dundee in Scotland to Plymouth on the south coast of England,” says Ward.
However, bringing thousands of employees together in fewer, larger sites raised an important question: how should meeting spaces be designed to enable seamless collaboration between in-person and remote participants?
“One of the main challenges is moving so many people into a central location, taking older, smaller rooms and creating new ways for people to collaborate,” says Ward.
Historically, many of BT Group’s meeting rooms relied on legacy video equipment that struggled to deliver a high-quality experience.
“We used low-resolution cameras where it was often hard to see the person on the other end of the call,” says Ward. “Light would affect the visual experience, quality, bandwidth and all kinds of other factors.”
BT Group uses the Huddly Crew five camera system at its Manchester hub site (Photo: Huddly)
To help meet this challenge, BT Group began to roll out Huddly’s modular camera systems. Unlike traditional video equipment, Huddly’s devices run AI directly on the camera, automating the meeting experience and making them straightforward to deploy and scale across a large estate.
BT Group was among the first organisations to test the Huddly C1 AI-driven videobar and, after introducing it at the Manchester hub site, the device quickly proved its value. Today, BT Group has deployed the C1 in over 30 small and medium-sized rooms, expanding to a C1 Crew multi-camera setup where the space demands it.
“In larger spaces where the C1 needs support to fully capture a room, we have the flexibility of retaining it as the heart of the camera experience, and adding cameras to extend coverage,” explains Ward.
For visibility in even larger spaces, BT Group deploys the five-camera Huddly Crew system. “All the cameras know what’s happening and can work out the best shot between them. They keep the speaker in view, and we can now see everybody’s face, rather than just side shots,” says Ward. “From the far end, you can see everybody wherever they’re seated, so remote participants are part of the conversation and never feel like they’re missing out on anything. For them, the whole experience feels much more natural.”
For Ward, the ideal meeting experience is one where technology works quietly in the background. “It should be seamless,” he says. “Not something that sticks out, but something people know is there and working.”
Deploying meeting room technology across a large estate brings its own challenges. Crew addresses this through a compact design that fits spaces traditional systems cannot, and the ability to run over internet protocol (IP).
“If we can run everything over IP with a single Cat6 cable, it’s cheaper, easier to install and much simpler to maintain. If something breaks, you’re not dealing with bespoke cables,” says Ward.
Looking ahead, BT Group plans to roll out hundreds of new meeting rooms. “We will have over 400 new or updated meeting rooms by the end of 2026, and we’re projecting Huddly will be used in well over 50 per cent of those spaces,” says Ward.
For BT Group, better meetings are just another way of delivering on what it does best: connecting people.
Discover more insights in the Spring 2026 issue of Technology Record. Don’t miss out – subscribe for free today and get future issues delivered straight to your inbox.